A "Regular" Schedule

On Saturday I had coffee with one of my favorite people in Seattle. He is a fixture in the Seattle theatre community who has jumped from small company to small company, repairing and growing them, though is ultimate goal is to own and manage his own theatre company. We were discussing his latest adventure with a small company when he dazzled me with his daily schedule.

"I get up every morning and work from home, I'm at the theatre by 9 am, I work until the afternoon when I have to go to rehearsal, I come home at midnight, unwind for an hour, go to bed and start the whole process over again."

Then he added, "I haven't seen the inside of a gym for months."

You would never know, but that's another point.

Listening to his adventures, which also recently included an emotional move from a house he loved, I realized just how undisciplined I am. And I'm not undisciplined in a way that would be terrible, but the fact is that I have a little too much going on and not enough hours in the day purely because I have a hard time buckling down and just doing the work. This mostly applies to my inability to get my studying done and keep a regular workout routine.

I usually attribute this inability to generate a regular routine with the fact that my schedule changes roughly every 3 weeks. From rehearsal to tech to performance to unemployment (or right into rehearsal if I'm lucky), the hours change, the expectations change, the amount of time I have available changes and I think "well, why bother, it's going to change in a few weeks anyway." But this has led to a series of late night panics over money, my to-do list, my business, my social life, all of it and I'm kind of tired of it.

So I did some annoying bit of soul-searching and realized I could never be the girl who gets up at 5am for a workout and generated a new daily schedule that manages to get in an hour of studying everyday, an hour long workout five times a week, time for business growth and time for my social life.

I'm on day 2 right now of this new schedule and am lucky that Andy has been amenable to the 10pm in-bed time as well as letting me run around the house for a half hour when I get home to get my life in order for the next day.

There's a voice in the back of my head that keeps reminding me that this will not last when I have children, to which I say, "We'll burn that bridge when we get to it."

Have you ever tried to make yourself a "regular" schedule? Do you have one? How has it worked for you?